Dissertation on musical taste Author:Thomas Hastings Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: multitude of cases there exists no real necessity for such failure, we shall have performed a service not unprofitable to our readers, and have laid a foundation... more » for future improvement. The topic will be occasionally resumed in the subsequent pages. Having spoken of instrumental and of vocal music, a single word on the subject of accompaniments shall close the present chapter. In the higher species of vocal composition, the instruments do not always hold a subordinate place. Occasionally they seem to form the chief object of attraction, while the voices are merely subsidiary. But in compositions of a simpler kind the case is reversed, the voice is the principal, and the instruments are subsidiary. Here, however, the art of playing an accompaniment is seldom rightly understood. It requires more talent of a specific kind than is usually supposed. It is perhaps the first thing to be attempted by the novice, and the last thing to be acquired by the proficient. The man who has but little skill upon his instrument, seeks at first to hide his imperfections by the softened touches of his hand. He executes with hesitation, and affords no real support to the singer. A little farther instructed, he grows confident, begins to play independently, and often to the singer's annoyance. Another stage of progress, and he comes to regard himself as the principal object of attraction; a mistake of which he is seldom fully convinced in after-life. The more skill in mechanical execution he acquires, the more reasonable it appears to him to claim the indulgence of display. To support the tones of the vocalist without drowning his articulation, to imitate his expression, to set off his excellences and cover his defects, and especially to copy his occasional imperfections, where they cannot be preve...« less